A renewable-energy “oasis” which is a part of the Sahara Foundation project intended to be built in 2010 will serve as a proving ground for new technologies designed to bring green living to the desert.

The project is all about to build an artificial Oasis in the desert by converting sea water into fresh water, using combination of renewable energy source.

• Concentrated Solar power
• The seawater greenhouse
• Cultivation of algae

For instance, special greenhouses would use hot desert air and seawater make fresh water for growing crops, solar energy would be collected to generate power, and algae pools would offer a renewable and easily transportable fuel supply.In addition, planting trees near the complex would trap atmospheric greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide while restoring any natural forest cover that has been lost to drought and timber harvesting.

The planned research center, shown above in an artist’s conception, is part of the Sahara Forest Project—the center would be a small-scale version of massive green complexes that project managers hope to build in deserts around the globe.

These complexes could create food, fresh water, biofuels, and clean electricity while also offering local green employment opportunities, organizers say.

Peat moss is a family of wild growing mosses. The decomposed fibrous remains of peat moss have been wildly used in gardening as plant food or mulch.

However, peat moss comes from very slow-growing and slow rotting plants. It takes 1000 years for a peat moss bog to add one yard to its depth.

In the British Isles, peat moss acreage has been reduced more than 80% due to heavy harvesting. Although there are still plenty peat lands in the North America, unlimited mining will eventually destroy peat bogs.

In addition, the costs of  fuels used to harvest, process and ship peat moss around the world is high.

So it is not such a green choice to use large amount of peat moss as soil amendment. However, it is a reasonable choice if used as part of seed starting mixtures.

Peat moss can hold lots of water, provide habitats for beneficial bacteria and is a poor medium for various fungi.

Once the seedlings are big enough to transplant into the garden, compost is a wonderful choice to enrich the soil for your plants.

A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey showed that every fish from 291 streams across the nation was contaminated by mercury. According to EPA standards, 25% of the thousand fish tested was unsafe to eat.

A large part of this ubiquitous contamination is due to the emissions from coal-burning power plants.

Mercury from power plants gets into water and is converted into methylmercury, which is readily taken up by organisms living in the water. Through the food chain, mercury accumulates and makes many fish harmful to eat, especially to children and pregnant/nursing women.

To find out which fish is safe or unsafe to eat, read the fish-consumption advisories issued by states. You can find them at EPA’s website: http://bit.ly/epafish

Sierra Club has a pocket guide called “Mercury Survival Guide”. You can download and print it at http://bit.ly/fishguide, and save it with your recipe book.

If you are a bird lover, besides putting feeders out for them, you can plant trees and shrubs that provide birds with food (berries, nuts and worms) and protection.

Plan ahead. Plant trees and shrubs that are attractive to both you and the birds. The more kinds of trees and shrubs you have, the more kinds of birds you will attract to your backyard.

When choosing plants, consider not only the food they produce for the birds, but also when they produce. This way, you’ll be able to establish a food supply for birds year round.

Also try to plant trees and shrubs with different shapes and sizes. Different birds prefer different kinds and levels of cover protection.

Native species to your region provide the best food and shelter for native birds.

Don’t worry about your fruits and vegetables. Most birds prefer natural, uncultivated food sources and only come to your garden to eat insects.

By creating a landscape beneficial for birds, you’ll also create conditions attractive to other wildlife, such as bees, butterflies, etc.

To learn more about trees, shrubs and birds, click here.

Enough pollinating bees means more and bigger fruits and vegetables for your garden. But heavy use of pesticides and monoculture system have hit bee population hard.

Like honeybees, native bees feed on nectar and collect pollen to feed their babies. In the process, they pollinate flowers and often do a better job on certain plants than honeybees.

There are many kinds of native bees, including Alkali bees, Bumblebees, Carpenter bees, Leafcutter bees, Mason bees, Shaggy fuzzyfoot bees, Squash bees, etc.

Native bees usually do not travel more than a quarter mile. A good way to protect and attract native bees to your property is to improve bee habitat.

1. Minimize the use of pesticides. Do not spray in the morning when bees are most active.

2. Grow native flowering plants to attract bees.

3. Grow crops such as squashes, sunflowers and strawberries every growing season to keep a stable population of bees.

4. Leave some areas such as field and road edge unmowed to provide habitat for ground-nesting bees.

5. Put out nesting boxes for bees.

Native bees not only improve harvest in your garden, they also pollinate forest trees and wildflowers.

To learn more about native bees, go to this site.

Roundup (glyphosate) is the most widely used herbicide in the world. Farmers spray millions of acres of crops using glyphosate each year. People also use it on their lawn and garden.

Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup, claims that the weedkiller is safe. But recent scientific studies have shown evidence that glyphosate is harmful to animal and human health.

Human placental cells are very sensitive to glyphosate at a very low concentration (lower than the agricultural use). The weedkiller also disrupts human sex hormone.

Exposure to glyphosate may cause eye and skin irritation, nausea, sore throat, headache, difficulty breathing and lethargy. It causes genetic damages to human and animal cells in a lab setting.

Studies also link the exposure of glyphosate to greater risks of cancer, miscarriages and attention deficit disorder.

This weedkiller can easily contaminate streams. It causes genetic damages and harm the immune system in fish and frogs.

Roundup also make a variety of plant diseases more severe.

It is important for the health and for the environment that we find alternatives to herbicides and pesticides.

To read a more detailed report on Roundup, click here.

Straw, manure and composmat are gardener’s friends for a healthy and productive garden. But do you know that they could also kill your lettuce, tomatoes, beans and peas?

The culprit is the widely used herbicide aminopyralid, an active ingredient in Milestone and Forefront.

This herbicide, as well as some others that belong to the same class of chemicals (such as clopyralid) developed and sold by DowAgroscience, was widely used on pastures with horses and cattle to control perennial weeds.

Although it was claimed that the herbicide should degrade within days, it has been found to persist for years. It passes through animals feeding on treated grass or hay.

Previously treated straw, well rotten manure from animals feeding on sprayed grass, or even compost converted from contaminated source may carry enough plant killer to kill your sensitive plants and harm the others.

To keep your garden save, ask questions before buying manure or compost.

To learn more about the problem and see what the company DowAgroscience, the EPA and the government have or have not done to control the problem, read this and this.

When you see some bugs chewing on your veggies in the garden, don’t panic. Before you invest in pesticides, consider beneficial insects — the “good bugs”.

There are many different beneficial bugs, such as lacewing flies, lady bugs, ground beetles, syrphid flies, trichogramma wasps, etc.

These good bugs prey on a variety of common pest insects, including aphids, spider mites, sweet corn earworms, cutworms, grasshopper eggs, cabbageworms, etc, etc.

Many of the good bugs do their pest control work while they are larvae rather than in adult form, when they feed mostly on nectar and pollen from flowers.

To attract beneficial insects to your garden, plant flowers and plants that provide shelter and food to them.

Plants that provide a suitable environment for good bugs include, but not limited to, Alyssum, Marigolds, Clover, Coriander, Fennel, Yarrow, etc.

You can purchase many of the beneficial insects from nurseries or catalogues. But you will still want to provide them with the right plants for them to stay and establish in your garden.

Read more, check out this website as well as this one.

Also see “Organic Pest Control (1) — Poultry“.

A 2009 HortScience paper showed scientific evidence on the decreased nutrition in commercially grown vegetables, fruits and grains in the last 50-100 years.

For example, protein concentration in wheat and barley decreased by up to 50% between 1938-1990. Newly developed corn varieties have declined protein, oil and some amino acids. Likewise, new wheat varieties have 22-39% less minerals.

This trend is caused by two forces.

 The first one is the environmental “dilution effect”, which occurs when yield increases are the result of fertilization, irrigation and other environmental means. This tends to decrease the concentration of nutrients in food.

The other force at work is genetic “dilution effect”, resulting from breeders developing high-yielding varieties without considering the nutrients in the crops.

It seems that the higher the yield, the less nutritioius the food.

If you are growing your own garden, you will get more nutritious vegetables by planting lower-yielding heirloom varieties. Also organic gardening will give us more nutritious homegrown food.

Also see this article.

If you have a backyard, or homestead and you are troubled by unwanted bugs around your garden, animals and humans, and if you are reluctant to spray pesticides, poultry might be the answer for you.

Poultry are easy to care for, provide delicious eggs, and their droppings add excellent nutrients to your compost pile. They are also entertaining to watch.

Another advantage of poultry is that they do an outstanding job controlling ticks, mosquitos and other pests.

In the June/July 2009 issue of MotherEarthNews, the editors collected many stories on how chickens, ducks and guineas help to decrease the number of bugs around peoples yards.

Chickens are the most common poultry people raise in their backyard. They eat almost everything that moves: ticks, fly larvae, grasshoppers, scorpions, centipedes, blackwidow spiders, crickets, and even small snakes.

Ducks not only manage pond pests, they are also tireless consumers of slugs, snails, beetles, and grasshoppers. They are great at controlling mosquitoes, snakes, wasps, termites and hornets.

Guineas are good pest controllers too. They are a good addition to your flock. They are more alert and often warn ranging chickens of overhead predators. They won’t disturb your vegetables when you put them in your garden.

For more amazing and amusing stories on poultry pest control, go to www.MotherEarthNews.com/eggs/pestpatrol.aspx

Also see “Organic Pest Control (2) — Beneficial Insects“.